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SETI@home is in hibernation

setiathome.berkeley.edu

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Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#161

Post by iforgotpassword »

_yb2s wrote: post #61
fsckboy wrote: post #25

I don't specifically miss SETI@home as much as I miss the spirit of the internet back then, the "what will they think of next!?" The idea that all of us could together could crack RSA keys wasn't just a thought exercise, people signed up and did it. Now computers are so complex and task heavy and fraught with problems it seems like more hassle than it's worth. I liked when wondering "why is my machine so slow", that…

Power and cooling were at fixed levels and computers couldn’t really sleep, so cpu cycles were just wasted without seti@home. Nowadays computers idle efficiently, so something like that would make your computer louder and more expensive to run.

Nah, HLT is pretty old and even back then had meaningful impact on power consumption. If you were running Win9x though you would've had to install an additional driver for it, as those really just busy waited otherwise when nothing was happening.

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#162

Post by bboygravity »

makeitdouble wrote: post #115
ETH_start wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that energy hasn't gotten more affordable really demonstrates a deficiency of planning. We've had access to a source of energy that is cheap, zero-carbon and essentially limitless, since the 1950s: nuclear power.

Another way to look at it: there is no miracle solution. It´s easy to look at any situation and say ¨If only they´d _just_ XXX¨. It´s never that simple. Even if you deeply believe your solution is flawless and people ¨just¨ need to be convinced, the very fact that the situation is happening at all is an indication it will be a long and dire fight... > essentially limitless oh well

Counterpoint: France is doing extremely well in Europe and is the only country that is doing well (I'm talking energy-wize). France is a nuclear energy country.

So yes, there is 1 pretty great solution to the energy problem and yes it has existed since the 50's..

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#163

Post by lacker »

ascotan wrote: post #87

With this project and the collapse of the Arecibo antenna it looks like the search for extraterrestrial life is on hold for the forseeable future. I loved the concept of the software though. It made people invested in the project even though they never took part in the academics. It was great PR even if it never produced any results that I know of.

The search isn't on hold, we just do it differently nowadays.

SETI@home was great for its time, but distributing data to lots of end user machines just isn't the right architecture any more. Modern radio telescopes produce so much data, you have to process it onsite - these are pretty remote facilities, and the bandwidth out is much less than the bandwidth the radio telescope can produce.

Arecibo is also a couple generations ago - the Green Bank Telescope is more powerful, and the next generation of SETI is with the arrays, the VLA in New Mexico and MeerKAT in South Africa.

I wrote some other stuff about the state of SETI here: https://lacker.io/physics/2022/01/21/looking-for-aliens.html

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#164

Post by bboygravity »

eru wrote: post #157
ETH_start wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that energy hasn't gotten more affordable really demonstrates a deficiency of planning. We've had access to a source of energy that is cheap, zero-carbon and essentially limitless, since the 1950s: nuclear power.

I agree that nuclear power would have been great. However it's no deficiency of planning. It's down to public opinion and misguided regulation.

That's like a project manager blaming the missing of deadlines on "the opinion of certain people in the company and the bureaucracy within the company".

Not sure if that would fly.

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#165

Post by lacker »

Breza wrote: post #82

I have a tangential question. I remember distributed processing being a "next big thing" back in the day. The idea was that a company could run complex operations by borrowing some power from all their employee's computers. Seti@home proved the concept was possible. So what happened? Why can't I train a random forest across all the computers currently logged into my company's VPN?

Nowadays a modern radio telescope, let's take MeerKAT in South Africa, can produce maybe 10T of data per minute. The total bandwidth out of the site is orders of magnitude less, because it's in the middle of nowhere in the desert. Same thing for pretty much all the radio telescopes - the technology improves over time, and we capture orders of magnitude more data, but the internet connections to these remote locations stay very slow.

So we have to do most of the processing on site.

AI training is similar but not quite so extreme - when you try to use a bunch of consumer machines, bandwidth becomes the limiting factor.

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#166

Post by lacker »

MagicMoonlight wrote: post #155

If they have useful data they need to upload it somewhere. Maybe nobody cares now, but at some point there will be an AI capable of ingesting it and it might see something worthwhile in it.

check out https://bldata.berkeley.edu/pipeline/ if you want to download terabytes of radio telescope data from scans searching for aliens....

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#167

Post by [deleted] »

kelnos wrote: post #128
ETH_start wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that energy hasn't gotten more affordable really demonstrates a deficiency of planning. We've had access to a source of energy that is cheap, zero-carbon and essentially limitless, since the 1950s: nuclear power.

After looking at my utility bill, less than half of the cost is electricity and natgas; the rest is delivery charges -- that is, paying to maintain the power grid itself. Assuming the utility is breaking that down more or less honestly, reducing the cost of electricity here probably wouldn't decrease my utility bill as dramatically as one might guess. (And I live in California, where electricity prices are notoriousl…

[deleted]

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#168

Post by esperent »

ifni wrote: post #153
bunabhucan wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if you know this but electricity can travel through conductors to other places.

Not everything is connected to the grid, you know. Here's an example of a single hydro dam a LONG way from the grid which (pre-Cryptocurrency gold rush) had 12 MW of unused power generation capacity plus they were talking up the possibility of adding an additional 20 MW of generation. https://www.hydroreview.com/business-finance/boralex-acquire... It's not going to be the only one.

> It's not going to be the only one.

It probably is the only one, or at least an unusual outlier.

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#169

Post by dheera »

fsckboy wrote: post #25

I don't specifically miss SETI@home as much as I miss the spirit of the internet back then, the "what will they think of next!?" The idea that all of us could together could crack RSA keys wasn't just a thought exercise, people signed up and did it. Now computers are so complex and task heavy and fraught with problems it seems like more hassle than it's worth. I liked when wondering "why is my machine so slow", that…

> I wouldn't look forward to unleashing an eternal, 24-7, intensive task with a connection to the internet

Just use another machine for stuff like this? Spare computers are cheap nowadays.

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#170

Post by NetOpWibby »

bombela wrote: post #143
bunabhucan wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Assuming the utility is breaking that down more or less honestly ... >And I live in California, This made me laugh out loud. (Worked with utilities all my life, including in CA.)

I have had around 13 power outages this week. I live right in the middle of Silicon Valley. Most of the charges from PG&E are indeed the grid charges, the rest is supposedly a mandatory green energy. This is depressing.

Fellow SV resident (does Cupertino count?) and my eyes water when I look at my energy bill. Then I lose power for two days and learn that people REALLY dislike PG&E. And I thought National Grid was bad.
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